The Core

by Jack Robuck

  She brought a hand up to his chest and petted him. He moved toward her, and she settled beneath him, pulling up her pale, freckled knees. He bent down to kiss her, and her lips crinkled into a big, pink, round smile. Her mouth was an open wound in his heart. He could feel his breath coming in short, thin gasps.

  She pulled off his shirt, and as she fumbled with his pants and grasped him, her cool hand made his blood surge, and the feeling of sliding inside her was all the more hot, and wet.

  Leaning in, he slid his left hand beneath her bottom, felt her, round in his palm so far from her center, as if he embraced the earth, or some holy ark. Her delicate pink nipples brushed against his chest where they perched solitary on each of her moon-like breasts. Her neck and jaw looked poured out of pale glass, and he eased down onto her, his weight on his elbow, under her shoulder, so that his right hand grasped her under the ear. Her short, fawn-colored hair began just beneath his thumb.

  She touched his face with both hands and stared up at him with big, wet eyes. "Slowly, now. Take your time, take all the time, Matthew."

  The air felt cold on his back. He could feel goose bumps on his shoulders and legs, but she felt like a steam engine beneath him, a tiny, slick oven, and for all her soothing words, he was out of breath. As he slid inside her again, and again, she arched her back and closed her eyes; as her torso rose, her enormous breasts parted from between her elbows, revealing the delicate texture of her rib cage, her collar and the heart-shaped dimple at the bottom of her neck, between the strands of her necklace.

  It overwhelmed him in an almost religious experience, it drew him in, tighter and tighter, until his entire focus was on the microscopic universe of her big pink mouth, slightly parted and wet, the hint of white between her lips, and the great round rosebud of their pursing, all this just a foot away from his face, pulsating, and he leaned in and kissed her. He grasped her face in both hands, and kissed her.

  *

  In the darkness, he said, “I’m glad I found those blankets.”

  He couldn’t see her, but she said, “What do you mean?”

  He turned his head. “Nothing, just a silly joke. I was joking that you brought me here because I brought you blankets.”

  There was a long moment of silence. “Like a trade?”

  He allowed himself to furrow his brow in the dark, unseen. “Yeah, it was just a joke, I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s funny, that’s all.” He reached over to find her, the back of his hand hitting her rib cage a little harder than he had planned.

  She pulled away. “Ow!”

  He heard her move, heard a blanket edge dragging along the floor, and he could see her holding it around her, looking out of the window into the night.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

  Ella turned to stare into the darkness at him. He could see her eyes, barely, but they were unfocused, searching for him. “I don’t find that funny.”

  Matthew said, “I’m sorry. Just a stupid joke.”

  She turned back to the window. “I don’t think it’s funny. I brought you here because I wanted to.” She snapped her head back toward him so quickly he jumped in the darkness. “I need you to understand that.”

  Matthew stood up, he walked into the light, and he squinted at her. “Okay…”

  She had tears welling across her big bottom lashes. “That’s not who I am. I let you make it because I wanted to, right then, and I don’t want anything, and I don’t need anything from you.”

  “Woah, I didn’t say you did, okay, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  She turned back to the window, avoiding his gaze. “It’s okay.” And then, “Could you go?”

  He found his clothes on the floor, under a blanket, and quickly dressed. As he slipped his shirt over his head, he tried to think of what to say, but he couldn’t figure out what the hell was the matter. He stood in the black doorway for a moment, and then walked away. He knew she could at least hear his footsteps fading down the hall.

  He went back to the rooftop and collapsed, exhausted, next to Glazier. The doctor turned to him, and offered him a drink from a short brown bottle. Matthew smiled, and took a swig.

  Glazier said, “What's the status?”

  Matthew laughed. “How did we ever get here?”

  Glazier grinned. “'Remember, colonist, when you arrive at your destination, things won't be the same as they are on this ship.'”

  Matthew and Glazier broke into a hearty laugh and said together, “Be prepared for the unexpected. Be prepared for the difficult, the unknown, the bleak, and the strange. You! Will! Survive!'”

  When their laughter subsided, Matthew confessed all of the fear and exhaustion that had been building up inside him. They discussed briefly the problem of Trague's thirst for revenge and his potential control of the Core. Glazier put an arm around him. They sat in silence, passing the bottle and looking up at the stars.

  Chapter 18

  The cool air woke Matthew, stiff and grimy with smoke from the campfire. He shook Glazier, who opened one pale eye at him in the early glow, and stared for a moment before sitting up. They pulled themselves together, Glazier passing his bottle to Matthew again. Matthew took a swig to rinse his mouth, thought better of it, and swallowed.

  He stumbled over to Natalie, Charlie, Sean and Stephen in succession, rousing them. Natalie lay beside the fire, legs straight, her hands crossed over her stomach.

  She woke as he approached, and looked up at him. “You look like shit,” she said.

  Matthew smirked. “Not all of us are professional soldiers.”

  Natalie made a noise in her throat between a laugh and a cough. “Not all of us can hold their liquor.”

  Matthew said, “You mean to tell me you slept through Sean and Charlie singing drinking songs into the night?”

  Natalie smiled.

  The group tromped down the stairs. Matthew felt dizzy by the time he had spiraled down to the basement level. He stopped by the infirmary to check on Jimmy and watched him for a moment from the doorway. He slept peacefully.

  Matthew took the dirt tunnel from the infirmary up to the back parking lot of the hospital. Six of Anderson's men were gathered there, as well as Matthew's friends. Over by a short concrete block wall, he saw Sean on one knee, a single finger on the long delicate leaf of a flower, somehow still alive.

  The sergeant from the day before introduced himself as Hollard, and he and the other soldiers shook hands all around. The soldiers gave them small belt-clip radios set to an encrypted channel.

  As they gathered their gear and paced out onto the streets, Hollard walked next to Matthew and Glazier. His reserved, spit-fire attitude hadn't survived the night, and in fact, it was clear that after having found out who they were, he was eager to like and be liked.

  He had plotted out a circuitous route designed to confuse their trail away from the hospital and approach the tower quickly, but from a different direction. He and Anderson hatched a plan to break through a weak point near the rear of the tower's defenses. Matthew called Natalie over and had Hollard tell her the plan as well, and she nodded.

  “Sounds good,” she said. Then after a moment, “What about a quick scout of the front gate, just to gauge the mood of the place?”

  Hollard nodded. “We can do that. Could be good info.” He made a scribble on his folded map, and stuck it back in his cargo pocket.

  The city around the hospital was a tactical nightmare. Broad open streets with little cover, divided blocks where the original architecture had been collaged over by a thousand makeshift structures, each with windows and balconies perfect for an ambush.

  Hollard led them at a jog through an old park with sand-caked trees and into an alley off the main road. He whispered to Glazier, “It’s slower going through here, but there's cover. The locals are friendly, for the most part.”

  They jogged through the neighborhood, rifles at the ready. Several times, they came quietly around corners to find locals scrubbing laundry,
or dishes, or playing at dice, and every time the civilians put their hands up by their ears in submission. Hollard gave them a wave and hurried on.

  Here and there, they could see the tower stretching into the sky. Far overhead, a cantilevered ring thrust out from its summit, and Matthew could only imagine the view afforded from its windows. He felt like a cockroach scurrying around the feet of a hangar mech.

  A quarter mile of the city had been destroyed for a kill-zone, and the rubble bulldozed outward away from the fortifications. They climbed the adobe and sun-brick rubble where it was piled between two half crushed homes, and peered over the top of a rusted bus that had been swept up in the destruction.

  The tower gate stood open before them, massive sliding walls of reinforced stainless steel on a deep track through the granite courtyard. The walls themselves were embattled, and sentries stood looking out through firing slots.

  The men standing in the mouth of the gate were barely a third of the height of the gates and wall, but they were armed to the teeth, and flanked by two enormous scorpions on thick chain leashes. Their glossy ocher shells gleamed with polish, their stingers fitted with steel armor ground to an incredibly fine point. Seeing the early sun gleam on its curve made Matthew twitch. Their handlers stood wary, in pairs, ready to pull in two directions to control the beasts, but at the moment, even they were still.

  The entire group was staring out beyond the rubble pile, down the broad central road toward the city center. Glazier whispered to Hollard. “Is this the normal security?”

  Hollard shook his head. “Not at all. They're waiting for something.”

  Matthew said, “Why don't they just close the gates?”

  Glazier shrugged. “Maybe they're waiting for something good.”

  Matthew peeked over the bus again. “Good for them means bad for us.”

  Through the distant dusty air came a series of mechanical clicks. It paused, and repeated, clicking again and again. The scorpions both tick-ticked their half-dozen feet, stabbing the sand and the granite around them, skittering slightly this way and that. Their handlers double wrapped their leashes around their wrists. All of the other Troopers stood frozen.

  In just a few moments, the source of the clicking, which repeated itself over and over again, came into view down the street. At first one, then a second and a third, and a fourth, ten, a dozen big domed vehicles. Like a cross between a tank and an armadillo, with beady sockets protruding from bulbous faces thrust low, pushing rubble before them, clearing the surface dirt of any potential mines. Their backs were hunched and seamed, like a beetle's shell.

  Hollard dropped quickly down below the edge of the bus, and pulled Matthew down with him. He looked at the rebels. “Scarab mechs.”

  Matthew looked at him, confused. Hollard shook his head and peered over the bus again. The scarabs had stopped clicking, and had encircled the gate. With a hydraulic whine, their arched backs split in two, rising overhead and twisting, slammed down into the dirt facing forward. Two great convex shields on either side of each bulbous nose, and as they advanced, the shields scrapped up the dirt as well, and the mechs overlapped their wings, forming an impenetrable wall.

  A thick hatch opened from the apex of the center mech's bulbous head, and the unmistakable disfigured shape of the bald and scarred Commandant Trague climbed up into view. His torso stuck out from the top of the mech like a nightmare cyborg, and he held his arms out wide, his fingers spread, his palms facing the Troopers on the ground before him.

  He looked around, his gaze passing over the entire scene, his eyes skipping over their hiding spot, and returning to the men at the gate.

  Natalie said, “Well, he doesn't know we're here. I was starting to think maybe he was tracking us. It was making my neck itch.”

  They could see Trague speaking to the Troopers. A man stepped forward from the second line, and replied to Trague, gesturing with one arm in a broad, sweeping arc. Trague stared at the man. The man swept his arm again, and pointed at Trague, and at the tower. Matthew could hear the rumble of his voice as his anger and volume grew.

  The tail end of the scarab mechs opened up, cargo doors lowering to the ground, and Sunjumpers poured from inside, hundreds of them huddling behind the shield plates.

  The Fleet Troopers on the ground unslung their rifles, and held them at the ready. Behind the cover of the scarab shields were Sunjumpers doing the same. As the man's voice grew louder, it echoed off the structures surrounding the kill zone. Trague reached down to his belt, drew his pistol, and shot the man. The distant spray of blood misted in the air for a moment before the man collapsed. The Troopers fired. Trague dropped back down into his mech. The rebels all looked at each other for confirmation of what they were seeing.

  From around the outside perimeter of the tower walls, Fleet Regulars began to pour in from hidden positions, flanking and surrounding the scarab mechs, hundreds of them from either side. The Sunjumpers who had opened fire through ports in the scarab shields broke off, and took on their ambushers. The columns of Troopers inside the gate relocated to cover positions and the tall steel gates were closing.

  Hollard began easing his way back down the graveled rubble slope. He tapped Matthew on the shoulder. “We should get out of here.”

  Matthew grabbed the man's sleeve. “We have to get to the tower before Trague gets in! This could be our last chance.”

  He turned to Glazier for support. Glazier crept closer, leaning over Matthew to yell through the gunfire. “They're all distracted, we have to make a move!”

  Hollard looked unsure, but it was clear he was no coward. He looked to his men, and gestured at one of them crouching on a high balcony back away from their position. The soldier looked through his binoculars, and his voice came over the radio. “Clear to advance on the right flank along the wall.”

  Hollard turned back to the rebels. “We can go around. Keep low, and try to get to the broken spot in the wall at the back of the tower.”

  Natalie turned to join the conversation, sliding down from her position at the bus. “Isn't that on the far side? It could take us hours to scout around that far.”

  Hollard grew impatient. “What do you want to do, charge the fucking gate? There's thousands of Troopers shooting it out down there.”

  Glazier held up a hand. “He's right. We want no part in this.”

  Matthew crawled back up to the bus to take a look. The Sunjumpers were outnumbered. There were assault craft in the air, some black and some white, and they were fighting each other, circling the tower, rolling overhead. All of them trying to get a bead on the soldiers on the ground and trying to shoot each other down. Two of them smashed into each other head on with a deafening pop followed by an explosion that washed Matthew's cheeks in warmth.

  He slid back down to the others and said, “Let's go!”

  They skirted around the barrier wall of the kill zone, happy to be isolated from the battle they could hear grinding on a hundred yards away. A few blocks on they rounded a corner, and scurried across an old, broad avenue where the wall of debris was open. A stray round hit a streetlamp near Matthew, and he ducked behind a steel walled electrical box on the median between two lanes. He looked around the corner toward the battle.

  Everything was much closer now. The kill zone narrowed off considerably away from the gate. He could see the backs of hundreds of Troopers focusing fire on the Sunjumpers. The gates were closed. Some of the scarabs were turning to face the new battle front.

  A clanking drew his attention to the corrugated ramp of the nearest scarab mech. Out of the darkness walked a giant of a man wearing heavy armor in curved, jointed plates and a bulbous mask, a larval version of the scarab mech's head. On his back was a tall pack with two rounded bumps. In his hands he held a long weapon. The business end had a big phallic flange, split on the bottom, and a tiny tube protruded past the end, and turned up in front of the barrel opening. Its tip held a tiny flame no larger than that of a cigarette lighter.

&
nbsp; Matthew covered his mouth. He managed to mouth the word “Fuck,” just as the armored man pulled the trigger. Jets of flame shot from his weapon and landed on the Troopers nearby. Their shots rang off his armor, and the sticky globules of burning liquid gas stuck to their clothes, their skin. He watched one man drop his weapon and claw at his face, pulling it away in clumps.

  More armored flamethrowers were sweeping the Troopers now. The scarabs had turned, and so had the battle. Hundreds of Troopers were falling back straight toward the opening in the kill zone where Matthew cowered.

  He looked toward his friends on the far side of the road. Sean, Stephen and Natalie were beckoning for him to run. He could see Glazier, Hollard and the others in the distance, peering around a corner and over cover. Glazier pulled back the slide on his rifle.

  The Troopers raced past Matthew. One saw him. Turning back, he looked frightened and confused. He raised his rifle as he ran, bringing it to bear on Matthew. A shot rang out, and Matthew snapped his head toward his friends to see Natalie lowering her rifle.

  He needed to move. Just as he peeked around the corner of the electrical box, a half dozen Giant Scorpions leapt to the top of the wall. Their armored stingers gleamed, their massive chitinous legs flexed, and they leapt down amongst the scarab mechs and began attacking the Sunjumpers.

  One of the flamethrowers spun around, blasting a scorpion in the face. It reared up, high overhead, exposing its underbelly. The flamethrower hit it again, and the scorpion appeared to shrivel slightly, convulsing. It slammed back down to the ground, protecting its belly.

  It thrust its head to the dirt, looking up at the flamethrower through blank black eyes, and from overhead its razor stinger came whistling, and arced straight down, the spike stabbing into the tubed pack and through the front of his armor, crushing him to the ground in a pinning stab that stuck the scorpion's stinger in the sand. The flamethrower's gas pack exploded, covering the scorpion and a dozen nearby Troopers in sticky flaming goo.